Sermons & Meditations

Isaiah 63:7-9; Matthew 2:13-23
Presented December 26, 2010, by Joel Kline
The First Sunday after Christmas

A note in the December 19 edition of The Writer’s Almanac, a daily email that includes a poem as well as brief remembrances of a variety of authors, contained the reminder that the English writer Charles Dickens’ familiar tale, A Christmas Story, was first published on December 19, 1843. We all know it—the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the mean old miser whose favorite expression is “Bah, humbug!” At the beginning of the tale Scrooge asserts, “Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart,” but by the end of the story—after encountering three spirits—Scrooge is transformed into a Christmas enthusiast, taking on the role of a second father to Tiny Tim, his assistant’s poor and sickly son. Exclaims the transformed Ebenezer Scrooge, “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!”

The story captures us—doesn’t it?—with its positive ending, its portrayal of the Christmas season as a time for family, a time for giving, a time for gathering around the table. But much of the story, in truth, focuses on the harsh life of poverty in 19^th century England. Indeed, one year prior to writing A Christmas Story Charles Dickens read a disturbing news story about child labor in England, and it was his anger and dismay at the fact that so many children lived in poverty, in a nation where there was more than sufficient wealth, that motivated Dickens to write his now-famous tale.

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Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-11
Presented December 12, 2010, by Joel Kline
The Third Sunday of Advent

It’s an intriguing story—isn’t it?—this tale of John the Baptist, languishing in prison, receiving reports of the ministry of Jesus, beginning to wonder if he has misjudged Jesus. Indeed, John’s doubts grow strong enough that he sends a group of disciples to question Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3). Of all people, we tell ourselves, the Baptist should have recognized Jesus’ ministry as authentic. But perhaps the story serves as a cogent reminder for us that Jesus little fits the mold of customary expectations—not in his own day, and certainly not in ours!

John the Baptist, the Gospel writer Matthew tells us, anticipated one who would come with a fiery agenda. “I baptize you with water for repentance,” asserts the Baptist, “but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:11-12).

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Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12
Presented December 5, 2010, by Joel Kline
The Second Sunday of Advent

“A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump, from his roots a budding Branch. The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over [the Branch], the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding, the Spirit that gives direction and builds strength, the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of God.” So begins Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message of one of Scripture’s best-known and most-loved texts—words from Isaiah, chapter eleven, giving voice to a deep and persistent human hope that justice and peace might one day cover the world; words, seen through the perspective of the Christian faith, celebrating the promise of the Christ-child whose coming sets the foundation for that long yearned-for peace.

The Advent season is the time in the church year when we are perhaps most painfully aware that our yearnings for peace continue to be elusive. During Advent we anticipate afresh the wondrous gift of Jesus, described in John’s Gospel as “the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us . . . full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). But this incarnational gift comes in such unexpected fashion, and centuries later, it still seems radically out-of-step with much of human life.  Reflecting on today’s text from Isaiah 11, Henri Nouwen reminds us that “our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness.” A [mere] shoot, the prophet asserts, shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud will blossom (Isaiah 11:1 NRSV).  Yet now, some 2000 years after the hidden and barely noticed birth of Jesus the Christ, we continue to hope and to yearn for the full blossoming of the bud of peace.

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